


Worry

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:26:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2353265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Jemma Simmons comes to leave the team prior to season 2, and where she goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worry

She’d been up since 5 AM, scrambling to get out the door for another meeting of her sunrise beach yoga class (Skye would laugh it saw her daily attempts). So really, she should have been asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

 

As usual, she’s not.

 

The early morning yoga, full course load, and coffee shop job (where she refused to drink anything other than decaffeinated tea) felt like nothing after her months on Coulson’s team. And even though they’re on the opposite side of the country (at least they were when she left), thinking about them keeps her up.

 

The clock on her dresser read 11:57 PM. Three more minutes and she’d be able to put her fears aside just enough to get some sleep. Hopefully.

 

 

She’d spent a month wrestling with the decision to leave before she made it. At first she told herself that Fitz needed her. She was a stabilizing influence. If they just stuck together, they’d be able to put him back together again. They could go back to the way things were.

 

But even if she put aside the damage to his brain and the toll it had taken, it was still impossible for her to ignore the distance that had grown between them since his confession. He wasn’t holding it against her; he’d never do that. But he was hurt. And he didn’t need her hanging around, reminding him of that pain. Not while he was trying to deal with everything else.

 

So after weeks of stalled progress, she decided it was time to remove that reminder.

 

Fitz was silent when she told the team of her intentions, and that was all the confirmation she needed that she was making the right decision. May was surprised, but didn’t argue with her. Trip, Coulson, and Skye tried to reason with her that she wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t making the right decision. But she stood her ground and, one after the other, they accepted her decision.

 

Coulson even suggested she take an undercover position at a lab in Toronto that had hired a large number of former SHIELD scientists. Jemma considered the option. She didn’t want to leave the team when they needed her, and her undercover work would definitely have benefited from the practice. And this way, they could call her back quickly if they needed her, if Fitz was ever in the proper place to talk about what had happened between them.

 

Ultimately though, she couldn’t bear the thought of stepping into a lab without Fitz by her side. He’d been a constant since her years at the Academy, and taking a step like that without him just felt wrong.

 

So she’d decided to go back to school. That still didn’t feel right, but it was the best option she could think of. After a long talk with Skye and May about guilt and loyalty, the hacker had rebuilt her identity– at least the electronic record of it.

 

Jemma Simmons was back on the grid, this time as a history graduate student at the University of Southern California. Skye and Trip probably would have appreciated the sun and sand more than she did, but she was determined to make the most of it while she was here.

 

She just hoped that wasn’t forever.

 

Still, she fell into a routine. Yoga that never quite relaxed her, classes that didn’t quite hold her attention, and a job she never had to use much of her brain for. But it was enough to distract her, to keep her from spending every waking moment agonizing over Fitz’s condition, or Coulson’s recruitment efforts, or whether Skye, Trip and May would return from whatever mission they were probably on at any given moment.

 

But those fears always returned as she lay in bed at night. Still, she enforced a strict 10 o’clock bedtime, followed by two hours of tossing and turning and checking the clock.

 

At least she had one small reassurance.

 

The cell phone charging on her nightstand buzzed out a text message alert, the same way it did every night at midnight.

 

She picked it up and typed in the unlock code.

 

_‘All 5 safe. All 5 home,’ the message read._

 

Those nightly texts, sent from a number Trip slid into her pocket as he hugged her goodbye, were her only connection to the team.

 

And right now her team was all together, all home. Wherever that was.

 

Except for her.

 

At least the mixture of guilt and regret that sat heavy on her chest didn’t keep her from sleep the way worry did.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know that I actually believe Jemma left the team and went off to study history and do yoga in Southern California, but I did want to explore why I thought Jemma left. I think this is the most likely reason, in line with her self-sacrificing personality, but I do kind of hope she left to take care of herself first and foremost.


End file.
